Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Drone Papers

theintercept.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 226 posts

Re: The Drone Papers

#71

Post by BuildTheRobots »

nkw wrote: post #14
gortok wrote: post #5

There are lots of important points in this set of articles, but a few stand point: - Congress has not defined what "assassination" means; and since they haven't defined it, the Executive Order 12333 is effectively meaningless. https://theintercept.com/drone-papers/the-assassination-comp... - IMEIs are used to track targets. Can IMEIs be spoofed? - Military Aged Males are considered enemy combatants. Effectively that…

>- IMEIs are used to track targets. Can IMEIs be spoofed? Yes. Relatively trivially.

I was going to say the exact opposite; that it's in no way trivial and that possessing the tools and information to do so is illegal in a number of European countries.

More information would be greatly welcomed :)

Edit: On reflection that sounds extremely dodgy... I got curious a few months ago and couldn't turn up much, so I'd certainly classify it as more difficult than trivial... but then I am still curious.

Re: The Drone Papers

#72

Post by Lawtonfogle »

MrJagil wrote: post #62
bambax wrote: post #48

This phrasing is incorrect: > [there are x persons] President Obama ha[s] authorized U.S. special operations forces to assassinate US special ops are the President's weapon. It doesn't make sense to say "yesterday I authorized my gun to kill a man"; what you want to say is "yesterday I killed a man". President Obama didn't "authorize targeted killings" or whatever you want to call those. He (and Bush before him) assa…

That's interesting. Wouldn't that logic excuse the "weapons" though? A common nazi excuse after WWII was that they were just obeying orders. That excuse seems to have been wildly disregarded. Edit: Yes, I am very aware both parties should then be considered morally responsible.

If you hire a hitman to kill your spouse, both you and the hitman are guilty of murder.

Re: The Drone Papers

#73

Post by mladenkovacevic »

xixi77 wrote: post #53
mladenkovacevic wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The optimist in me likes to at least entertain the notion that the large scale effort to justify, sanitize and in some cases morbidly celebrate the failing of the long term US foreign policy has some part to play in shaping public opinion. But if you are absolutely correct that those numbers represent the general values of the American people then can it be argued that once rewarded with enough material gain, an enti…

How do you define "positively evil"? If there are people whose objective is to destroy our quality of life (material or otherwise), is it immoral to make an effort to eliminate them? Now, I do have serious doubts whether the drone program actually serves that purpose, but are you suggesting that we should ignore legitimate threats to our well-being, or perhaps that there are no such threats?

I wasn't suggesting that there are people out there who actively want to destroy our quality of life. All things being equal, most foreigners couldn't care less how we make our living as long as it's not off their backs. Throughout recent history, however, that's exactly how certain US conglomerates have made much of their fortunes. There are no legitimate threats to our well being other than those created by our own military excursions overseas.

The most unfortunate part in all this is that the rewards for middle class in all this are sort of superficial. I believe that the US would still be a great economic power with many of its citizens enjoying a comfortable life even without the enormous projection of military power overseas. Maybe lacking a few billionaires and some minor trickle down economic benefits, but by and large, regular people in US would still be as innovative, productive and successful as ever.

So if US had never bombed a number of countries or organized a number of coups or ended sanctions against Iran, Cuba and Russia tomorrow, the average American would hardly feel the difference or be any more threatened. But unfortunately political power in the US is not controlled by average citizens.

Re: The Drone Papers

#74

Post by TeMPOraL »

jrometty wrote: post #69
MrJagil wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's interesting. Wouldn't that logic excuse the "weapons" though? A common nazi excuse after WWII was that they were just obeying orders. That excuse seems to have been wildly disregarded. Edit: Yes, I am very aware both parties should then be considered morally responsible.

Testing susceptibility to peer pressure in an individual mind is very a interesting idea. Unfortunately, we can't accurately test it _yet_. A huge amount of data and tests -along with massive improvements in the understanding of the human brain- would be required to make a complete snapshot, without which testing isn't possible. We can't eve be sure this theoretical test is possible. This alone wouldn't prove that th…

> This alone wouldn't prove that their hands are clean, just that they wouldn't be as much to blame as someone who didn't succumb to social pressures and had more of a choice in the matter.

I don't think this is the real deal behind that decision. We've established that people are generally pretty susceptible to authority and peer pressure. Moreover, military training exists primarily to increase it. But the effect that legal clause has is that it counteracts this susceptibility by removing any doubt you could have that you'll be on the hook if you follow orders telling you to commit atrocities. It reduces the effect of peer pressure.

Re: The Drone Papers

#75

Post by Lawtonfogle »

rhino369 wrote: post #26
gortok wrote: post #5

There are lots of important points in this set of articles, but a few stand point: - Congress has not defined what "assassination" means; and since they haven't defined it, the Executive Order 12333 is effectively meaningless. https://theintercept.com/drone-papers/the-assassination-comp... - IMEIs are used to track targets. Can IMEIs be spoofed? - Military Aged Males are considered enemy combatants. Effectively that…

>Military Aged Males are considered enemy combatants. Effectively that means all males ages 18-49 are considered enemy combatants. Since you're guilty by association, your age makes you a target. You are conflating what the US considers enemies before targeting and after a strike. The US doesn't just bomb any random male 18-49. But when the US does target what it thinks is a legitimate target, it counts any unknown m…

>You being near a target doesn't really make you a target either. It makes you a tragic accident.

You know, had you not worn that short skirt... well that tragic 'accident' wouldn't have happened.

Re: The Drone Papers

#76

Post by TeMPOraL »

bambax wrote: post #48

This phrasing is incorrect: > [there are x persons] President Obama ha[s] authorized U.S. special operations forces to assassinate US special ops are the President's weapon. It doesn't make sense to say "yesterday I authorized my gun to kill a man"; what you want to say is "yesterday I killed a man". President Obama didn't "authorize targeted killings" or whatever you want to call those. He (and Bush before him) assa…

This is just nitpicking. You "just" kill a person with a gun, but you don't "just" kill a person with a missile. Any complex weapon system will require you to "authorize" the launch. Similarly here, "authorizing to assasinate" should be read as "deployed a very complex weapon". Obviously, in no way this absolves one from responsibility.

Re: The Drone Papers

#77

Post by [deleted] »

bambax wrote: post #48

This phrasing is incorrect: > [there are x persons] President Obama ha[s] authorized U.S. special operations forces to assassinate US special ops are the President's weapon. It doesn't make sense to say "yesterday I authorized my gun to kill a man"; what you want to say is "yesterday I killed a man". President Obama didn't "authorize targeted killings" or whatever you want to call those. He (and Bush before him) assa…

[deleted]

Re: The Drone Papers

#78

Post by stefantalpalaru »

snake_plissken wrote: post #55

For me the most grave offense of our current president was taking out Anwar al-Awlaki in 2011. I understand he was not a good individual, by any means, but he was an American citizen which entitled him to all of the protections afforded under The Constitution. Programs like these are what undermines any legitimacy our country has left.

Don't forget his 16 year old son, killed 2 weeks later at an outdoor restaurant, together with 6 other people: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdulrahman_al-Awlaki

He was also a US citizen.

Re: The Drone Papers

#79

Post by marcosdumay »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #18
whatafarce wrote: post #10

Utterly disgusting, America conducts clear war crimes, tortures, bombs afghan hospitals, assisinates, all without consequence. I'm sure some idiot will tell me to vote, because that'll change the systemic corruption and nightmare that has taken hold of US power. Did voting in nazi Germany help? No because they were voted in, voting only legitimizes a political system completely captured by insiders and corporate jugg…

Some alternatives to voting that come to my mind: - Figure out the real reason why the US is at war with "terrorism", and do everything to help develop and popularize technology that will make that reason obsolete. Is it because of oil? Then become a Tesla evangelist. - Keep talking, writing, shouting about the issue, shaming and blaming everyone even tangentially related to drone strikes. It's utterly ridiculous tha…

> If you know anyone over at Hollywood, pitch for turning the problem into a movie.

That was the last RoboCop. Seems that nobody cared enough to even recognize the problem.

Re: The Drone Papers

#80

Post by rhino369 »

korisnik wrote: post #51
rhino369 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Military Aged Males are considered enemy combatants. Effectively that means all males ages 18-49 are considered enemy combatants. Since you're guilty by association, your age makes you a target. You are conflating what the US considers enemies before targeting and after a strike. The US doesn't just bomb any random male 18-49. But when the US does target what it thinks is a legitimate target, it counts any unknown m…

> it counts any unknown males killed in the strike as enemy. It doesn't use that assumption to do the strike. Imagine for a moment that someone (be it some foreign agency, US police, army or whoever) did the same in America, to American citizens . Would you be outraged by your explanation? "Hey, it's not like they're targetting them specifically. They're just deciding that they were all enemy combatants post-factum .…

If someone was bombing America, the way they were tallying the enemy combatants wouldn't really be a huge concern, to be honest.

Let's say the Michigan Militias sack Windsor, Canada. And Canada drops a bomb on their clubhouse. And a bunch of redneck young men are killed. You gotta assume they were part of the militia.

Post reply on HN